Broad hopes to grind down India
Stuart Broad has become the latest England player to bemoan the lack of home advantage after his side conceded a tenth-wicket stand of 111 to India on the second day of the Investec Test series at Trent Bridge.Broad had called for a pitch offering pace and bounce in the lead-up to the game, but was instead presented with a surface that he claimed was slower than those found in India.While Broad welcomed the apology made by the Nottinghamshire groundsman, Steve Birks, at the end of day one, he did appeal for quicker surfaces for the remainder of the series.”It’s certainly not what England would have asked for and not what Trent Bridge would have hoped for,” Broad, who plays his county cricket at the ground, said. “I think the best thing that’s happened is Trent Bridge have come out and said ‘Look, our mistake’, and apologised for the pitch.”Trent Bridge is renowned for exciting cricket. You come here to see nicks carry, dropped catches, good runs, exciting shots and quick bowling. We’ve not really seen a lot of that. I just hope that other grounds don’t follow suit.”Despite the stand between Mohammad Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Broad felt England had bowled well in difficult circumstances and kept India to a total no better than par. He also felt that England would have a good chance of repaying the punishment as their own innings progresses.”The two batsmen played very well,” Broad said. “But once the ball is soft, there’s no help for length bowling. We tried everything but they kept the ball out.”But in the middle session we claimed four wickets for 90 runs, which was out best session of the day, so it’s hard to be too down on ourselves.”460 is a decent score. It’s not a 600 which could easily have happened on that wicket. If you can’t bowl a bouncer at a lower-order player, it takes out a lot of the threat. Batsmen can get forward and protect their stumps, and then thrive off any width, so we will be hoping to do the same.”We’ve got one job: to bat as big as we possibly can. We have to make use of days three and four and try to put the Indians under pressure on the last day.”If we can get a good start and build, I’m sure the Indian bowlers won’t be looking forward to bowling at Ben Stokes coming in at No. 8 when they’re a bit tired. We can certainly get a big score if we get our heads down.”Broad also backed Alastair Cook to recover his batting form and, while admitting the England captain – who has now gone 25 innings without a Test century – was in “a rut” insisted poor fortune was a primary reason for the lack of runs.”When you’re in a bit of a rut and you’ve not scored runs for a while, things go against you,” Broad said. “I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the ball canon off the thigh pad on to the stumps. They generally go to fine leg for one.”He is just in one of those places at the minute. It will turn. It just takes a cover drive or a dropped catch to change the momentum. We’ve certainly got enough cricket in the next five weeks for it to change.”He was fine afterwards. When you get out like that there’s not a lot you can do. If he had drilled one to extra cover he would have been annoyed. But he was chatting away, he was chirpy. He was disappointed not to make a big contribution but those sort of dismissals are so rare you can’t do much about it.”